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Government & National Security

The reality is that national security has an ongoing, fundamental responsibility to protect the people of our country. If service to your country is your calling, TU offers a premier national security program that will enable you to define, detect and defend against emerging threats. Our grads have gone on to work in the Department of Defense, CIA, FBI, United Nations and Secret Service. You can, too.

Our national security depends upon the creativity, energy, and skills of young people serving with federal, state, and local agencies and operating in our homeland at our borders and overseas. The next generation of diplomats, military officers, and analysts with the CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and state and local offices will help define, detect, and defend against threats to our national security that emerge in coming years. Hiring at all levels of government reflects our urgent and continuing need for more and better-educated professionals to defend our nation and its interests.

Tiffin University has developed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) Degree in Government & National Security to help meet the growing and demanding needs of our governing agencies for motivated and well-educated graduates. Recruiters and other representatives from the CIA, FBI, Department of Defense, Department of State, U.S. Secret Service, and U.S. Marshals, among others, have come to TU to encourage our graduating seniors to apply for permanent positions with their agencies. They look to TU because they know our graduates have the kind of practical, real-world education necessary to meet the many security challenges in the coming years.

A Faculty With Real World Experience

Our Government & National Security program reflects the real world of national security because our faculty comes from that world. Our faculty has served in combat, in CIA stations, in military installations, with international organizations, in FBI field offices, with U.S. Marshals, and in the White House. They bring the real world of national security to our program through outside speakers, internships, and, most of all, through instruction every day in the classroom.

TU Makes It All Relevant!

You won’t be doing book reports. You’ll be doing written and oral briefings on both real and hypothetical security situations that require quick analysis and problem solving. You will learn using the same tools and methods that our national security agencies use for current employees. You will learn how everything taught in our classrooms applies in the real world and TU makes it all relevant!

The first section of this major draws on those parts of a traditional curriculum that bear directly upon the workings of our governmental system in general, and our national security system in particular, at the federal, state, and local levels.

The second section of this major focuses on the structure, elements, and history of our consideration and the six major instruments of national power: diplomacy, information, military, economic, finance, intelligence and law enforcement – used to protect and promote our national security. The curriculum also applies these elements to the issues of international security and globalization that our majors will face upon graduation.

Students obtaining the Government & National Security degree may choose between two concentrations: the Intelligence & Security Studies concentration and the Politics & Government concentration. The Intelligence & Security Studies concentration is designed for students contemplating jobs in the military, the intelligence community, or foreign affairs. The Politics & Government concentration is designed for students contemplating careers in law, in electoral politics, or in the broader public sector.

What You Can Expect From Your TU Government & National Security Degree:

Graduates will be able to analyze and devise solutions for problems in national security within the framework of our instruments of national power and their use within our political/legal and policy context.

Graduates will possess a detailed understanding of the history and culture of other parts of the world and how it affects national security.

Graduates will understand the historical context for current international security threats that the United States faces at home and abroad, and how the United States uses the tools of national power to protect the vital interests of America.

Graduates will understand potential careers and work expectations in the federal goevernment.

Graduates will exhibit critical multimodal communication skills.

Graduates will exhibit the ability to write and think critically.

Core Curriculum of the School of Criminal Justice & Social Sciences 12 hoursGovernment & National Security Major 18 hours

One of the following:

HIS225 United States Diplomatic History Since 1895

HIS226 United States Military History Since 1895

POL345 Economic Instruments of Security Policy

POL350 International Security.

POL491 Capstone Senior Seminar in Homeland and National Security

SCS300 Research Design (w)

SCS470 Internship I

Total BA hours 121-123 hours

This is a sample course sequence to illustrate course offerings for this major. Consult the official Academic Bulletin for detailed registration and advising information.

On Campus - Offered in a 15-week semester format with start dates of January and August

Counterintelligence/Counter-terrorism (ENF441) - This course addresses the issues of counterintelligence and counter-terrorism (covert information modification and planned preemptive responses). This course will provide an explanation of these two different tactical operational modalities. The interconnectivity of these two separate operational fields will be examined to determine their structural relationship in combating an enemy threat. Additionally, this course will examine the geopolitical utilization of these operational methodologies by U.S. domestic and foreign-based operatives providing security to U.S. domestic security interests. Lastly, this course will examine the use of technology and human intelligence in their application regarding counterintelligence.

American National Security Policy (POL313) - Students trace the development of national security in the United States from its conceptual birth during World War II to the present day, including the role that intelligence plays in national security policy. The course examines how national security policy has developed through succeeding presidential administrations.

Transnational and Unconventional Threats (POL420) - Students will examine some of the unconventional security threats posed by transnational actors and organizations. Topics to be covered include globalization, WMD proliferation, drug cartels, energy security, information security, pandemics and border security. Students will also critically assess how best to organize America’s national security apparatus to respond to these wide-ranging unconventional threats.

Intelligence Analysis (POL425) - The intelligence world is one of ambiguity, nuance, and complexity. Knowing one’s enemies and knowing one’s self has been sage advice for centuries. But how does one know what your enemies are thinking? This course focuses on the conversion of processed information into intelligence through the integration, analysis, evaluation and interpretation of all source data and the preparation of intelligence products in support of known or anticipated user requirements. Analysis is but one phase of the intelligence process, but it is perhaps the most important. Students who take this course will expand their research, computer, communication and analytical skills in order to identify significant facts and derive sound conclusions from imperfect and often contradictory information and flawed evidence.

Faculty

Gene Chintala, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Political Science

School of Criminal Justice & Social Sciences

Degrees & Certificates

B.A., Elmira College

M.S., West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D., Bowling Green State University

Gene Chintala, Ph.D.

Dr. Chintala came to Tiffin University as the Dean of Freshmen in the Fall of 2000. Previously, he filled in as acting Director of Career Development in the Fall of 1999. Dr. Chintala currently teaches courses in political science and history at Tiffin University. His research area is with the Truman Commission on Higher Education and Post-War education policy. He also does research on popular culture and college students. He has presented at several national conferences regarding his research and on popular culture.

He also serves a dual administrative role as the Dean of Advising and Retention, overseeing the advising for undergraduate students and promoting programs that increase the retention of students. Dr. Chintala is a member of the American College Personnel Association where he serves on the Directorate for Academic Success in Higher Education, the History of Education Society, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and the National Academic Advising Association.

He has worked in a variety of positions in academic and student affairs including residence life, career development, student activities, international student services, orientation, academic advising, judicial affairs, and admissions and recruiting. Dr. Chintala also worked with the Adult Learner Focus of the College Student Personnel (CSP) Program at Bowling Green State University, where he taught and recruited in the graduate CSP program. He has also taught at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

David Selnick

Assistant Dean of the School of Criminal Justice and Social Sciences

Assistant Professor of Intelligence and Security Studies

School of Criminal Justice & Social Sciences

Degrees & Certificates

B.S.B.A., Bowling Green State University

M.O.D., Bowling Green State University

M.A., Royal Military College of Canada

Ph.D. candidate, Newcastle University

David Selnick

Professor Selnick joined Tiffin University in January 2013. Prior to that, he spent 20 years in the United States Air Force, performing duty as a Cyberspace Operations officer, a Logistics officer, and a Politico-Military specialist. Professor Selnick served in numerous locations across the United States, as well as several foreign countries.

During his time in the Air Force, Professor Selnick spent four years in Ottawa, Canada, as a Foreign Exchange Officer with the Canadian Forces, serving in a semi-diplomatic capacity. He also served in Baghdad, Iraq, as part of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, where he helped plan, execute, and manage the largest logistical movement of U.S. troops and materiel since World War II--including subsistence products worth over $3 billion per year. As a result of his efforts, he was awarded the Lance P. Sijan USAF Leadership Award at the Major Command level. Professor Selnick later served as a communications officer for Special Operations Command Central, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries in the Middle East as part of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. His responsibilities included tactical and base-level communications for Special Operations Forces in the entire U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility. In 2007, US Central Command named him the Communications Officer of the Year. Professor Selnick's last assignment prior to retiring from the Air Force was as the Chief of Cyber Security Strategy and Planning at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. There, he was responsible for numerous efforts, including working cooperatively with our defense industry partners to better protect their networks from cyber espionage and with the Intelligence Community to determine the damage that resulted (in terms of dollars, technological knowledge, and the development of countermeasures) from cyber intrusions. He also worked extensively with offices across the service to reorganize the way the Air Force manages cryptography.

He is a contributor to an ongoing joint effort between the US Army Cultural Resources program and the University of Colorado's Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands to develop and publish the first Cultural Heritage Guide for Field Commanders.

Professor Selnick is a member of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), an independent policy institute based in London, UK; the US Committee of the Blue Shield; the Archaeological Institute of America and its Cultural Heritage Military Panel; the Combatant Command Cultural Heritage Working Group; the Society for Military History; the Air Force Association; and the Jane Austen Society of North America. He is also a certified Project Management Professional ® through the Project Management Institute.

Professor Selnick has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Bowling Green State University, a Master of Organization Development degree, also from BGSU, a Master of Arts in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada, and is currently pursuing his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Museum, Gallery, and Heritage Studies from Newcastle University, where he is researching the legal and moral obligations regarding the protection of cultural property during a time of conflict.

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– Jessica Paule, Class of 2015

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